VANITY FAIR
By William Makepiece Thackery
PF Collier & Son Company, 1917, 829 pages
Reviewed by Michael Beach
The specific edition reviewed in this posting is a combination of two out of twenty volumes included in a series titled Harvard Classics Shelf of Books. It was originally published as a serial in 1847 and 1848.
The idea of “vanity fair” was that of an actual fair attended by people of society who exhibited the negative traits of the upper crust. The story of this novel itself focused on two young women, friends, whose fates intermix at different times. The characters are not attending the metaphorical vanity fair, but are themselves examples of the attitudes of people of society who suffer the fickleness of life events.
Becky (Rebecca Sharp) and Emmy (Amelia Sedley) separate after leaving school. Becky marries better than Emmy to Pitt Crawley, but then she and her husband prove vain and focused on the visible trappings of wealth. As they lose wealth through poor management they turn to tricking others out of money through a variety of schemes. Becky also regularly cheats on her husband who eventually comes to his senses and leaves her to fend for herself. Becky eventually lives a life of bad reputation.
Emmy loses her husband, George Osborne, to the Napoleonic War with Britain. She refrains from giving to the love of her husband’s best friend, William Dobbin, as she venerates the memory of her husband. She eventually learns that her husband had trists during their short marriage. She also learns of the benevolence of the friend who had put them together out of deference to her preference. She further learns she has been the lifelong beneficiary of his financial help. Emmy finds happiness in later life as she decides to marry him.
The story is long, but keeps moving. The characters are developed well enough that the interactions feel authentic. I’m not one to read romantic works. I went through this particular work because it is part of the Harvard Classics volumes mentioned above. It is said to be classic literature and I was familiar with the title, though had been more familiar with it as the name of a more modern popular magazine.
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